Inculcation of Science Process Skills in a Science Classroom

Teachers play an important role for teaching science process skills in class through planning and arranging learning activities and teaching how to reach scientific information. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the teaching aproaches used in the teaching and learning process of a science class are able to provide the opportunity to inculcate science process skills and to identify which science process skills were inculcated (if any) during the lesson without actually planning to teach science process skills. This is a qualitative case study in two Smart Schools in Malaysia. 24 students aged 14 years old and two science teachers were the sample of this study This study revealed that the process of teaching and learning science that uses various teaching approaches in one science lessons has additional advantages in terms of providing opportunities for the inculcation of science process skills. It also managed to provide the students with the opportunity to learn independently in acquiring some of the skills. The use of various teaching approaches is in juxtaposition to each other. Science teaching and learning process is a dynamic process, where the movement from one teaching approach to another occur and not necessarily always occur in an orderly sequence. Hence, the use of various teaching approaches in a single lesson can create more opportunities for inculcation and acquisition of science process skills in the classroom.